Last month, the Joint Legislative Committee on Dropout Prevention and High School Graduation received a report on the 2007 and 2008 recipients of dropout prevention grants. The NC General Assembly appropriated $22 million in the first two years of the grant program.
Consultants with EDSTAR, the company hired to conduct the evaluation of the grants, tried their best to be positive. Keep trying.
Findings included:
1. Two 2007 grant recipients (a school district and a university) refuse to provide information to the NC Department of Public Instruction. Apparently, an investigation is underway.
2. There was shoddy record keeping and accountability among grant recipients. Some didn’t even bother to keep detailed records.
3. According to researchers, “Some of the programs have documented effectiveness with pre- and post-data.”
No further details were provided. Why? “Many grant recipients reported difficulty obtaining and using data. Even school systems reported data use to be cumbersome, and that they used paper files rather than electronic files.”
4. Students who did not need services received them anyway.
Researchers found, “For example, one staff member reported that after writing their SMART Outcomes and obtaining data, they discovered that only one student they were serving with targeted services to reduce suspensions had ever been suspended. As previously discussed, another reported that many of their students were being tutored in math with the goal of passing algebra, when they learned most of the students had already passed algebra.”
